"Mages are masters of the elements" - Brian Holinka

[Lodravel]

Ugh... I'm already dreading this "unpruning"... non-rotational abilities are fine, but rotations already have the required "critical mass" of abilities, and any duplicates will be pure bloat.

I disagree. Frost is certainly decked out, depending on your talent choices, but fire and arcane are both a bit bland when it comes to their rotation.

Also, if you're struggling for keybinds, you should consider using all the modifiers, i.e. shift, ctrl, and alt. Takes some getting used to but it will do the trick.

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My question is, what is an arcane mage going to do with frostbolt? I'm all for returning abilities and removing spec restrictions but things like this don't make a whole lot of sense now.

It will be relevant for PvP. If you get locked out of arcane, Frost Bolt (& Fire Blast) allows you to keep slowing/damaging enemies, whereas without them, you'd be entirely useless for the duration of the kick. Arcane especially has suffered from this problem since the pruning.

[Mojo03]

Ya... sounds like bloat from the sound of it.

Feels more like a step backwards, unless they can make it meaningful, which they probably won't.

It'll literally probably just be extra buttons on the bar.

I'm more of a fan of focused specs to be honest.

[Reivur]

I certainly acknowledge that there were a few classes, notably hybrids who lost a ton of identity when specs hard-wiring your gameplay to certain skills reared their head. Druids, Paladin's and Shamans all had a legitimate grievance with this and I'm 100% on board with them being excited. Silly shit like Eyes of the Beast being back for Hunter is AOK too but lets not pretend that it isn't silly shit.

On my Mage I have a hard time being excited about it or caring. It just looks like a lazy gimmick. Maybe I can use Frost Bolt, or if they somehow pry Slow away from being Arcane only. That's it. I don't see the practicality of being able to cast these spells, especially since as they say we're still 'doubling down' on the spells within that sphere of spec. I don't see what's going to change for any class that's traditionally 'pure'.

Maybe Warrior might get stances? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Schmilblick]

True story, but don't quote this idiot

and more importantly, don't trust Blizzard.

[durrtygoodz]

Being able to cast frostbolt as an arcane mage doesn't make up for the fact the spec is ancient, out dated, and not fit for purpose. The announcement of an arcane rebuild and overall mage rework should have been the top billing at Blizzcon but instead they told you they'd let you cast fireball as a frost mage and you stained your underwear in the front and back.

[Aphrel]

Were supposed to be the master of the elements but for 15 years weve been unable to dispell magic.

Am i the only one who finds this incredibly ironic?

[bloodmoth13]

Ugh, worst statement they made.

Shamans are masters of the elements, mages are masters of arcane that can specialize in different schools. fire and frost are only 2 elements anyway.

I liked the direction that mages were specialists while shamans were generalist elementalists, now they are just shamans in robes, and when i play my fire mage, i dont want to have frosty abilities on my actionbar, and dont tell me not to use it when its a part of my skillset that my class is balanced around, thats retarded.

They should have just added a couple of frostfire talents to frost/fire talent trees and called it a day.

[Charge me Doctor]

CoC, on the other hand, is just a must-have when it comes to questing or PvP. Fire mage has become so bad at keeping opponents at bay compared to it's earlier iterations. Frostbolt will obviously vastly improve fire's ability to kite already but CoC was always an essential tool for taking on and kiting multiple opponents. It's a fair trade off IMO, offering a big slow but only on targets that are very close already.

Remember when CoC and DB were on separate cooldowns? So many melee players were crying.


Just a reminder that you won't have a rank 1 frostbolt with short cast time, and you won't have -0,5s cast time talents, so you'll stuck with ~2s cast frostbolts for snaring enemies. Ugh.


Anyways, i don't really care about abilities like AE and CoC being "baseline" abilities, having an on-demand instant AoE spell is kinda powerful by itself, considering how a fire mage does his AoE, so it'll either be worthless for a firemage, or firemage will prefer using AE over his regular fire AoE, which would be weird, it's a can of worms. We won't get any final numbers until release, and at release smart people will run sims with new values and it'll be obvious if blizzard failed or not at balancing those "baseline" abilities to "spec-related" abilities, it will take them quite some time to fix, while we'll be stuck with it.

[Sencha]

That's good news. But ... did you really need to quote YOURSELF?

[Charge me Doctor]

Heck, then who is Elemental Shamans or Shamans as WHOLE?

For me Mages were always "Masters of Magic, especially Arcane magic"

That's not how magic works, fire and ice are elements. Shamans are able to channel powers of elemental spirits through their bodies. PC mage are using arcane magic to conjure fire and ice. Mages are not masters of elements, they are masters of arcane magic only, Holinka worded it quite strangely, but blizzard in general don't communicate this part about arcane clearly enough.

Personally i think that "arcane" arcane spec made a lot of confusion and shouldn't be in the game, chronomancer would make more sense in this case. All magi are arcane magi, some are better trained at conjuring and using fire, some are better trained at using frost, being well-trained "arcane" mage simply means that he is able to conjure things more efficiently and screw with magic in general (spellbreakers come to mind, having better understanding of arcane magic and being able to dismantle enemy spells and echantments)

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My question is, what is an arcane mage going to do with frostbolt? I'm all for returning abilities and removing spec restrictions but things like this don't make a whole lot of sense now.

lore-wise? He has better understanding of that conjurement, and can defend against it it a better way than a frost mage, he may also conjure it in a more efficient way than a frost mage, but has less application for it due to lack of actual experience of using it (as in - he understands how to conjure frost element very well, but lacks understanding exact effects of it against enemy compared to frost mage. Arcane mage using frostbolt would have worse damaging, slowing effects for example, or they wear off significantly quicker). I think that if we have to have an arcane spec for a mage, good interpretation of one would be Rubick from dota

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Maybe Warrior might get stances? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe warrior might get some interaction with weapon types they are using, like increased reach for two-handed weapons, but i don't see this being implemented with current loot system

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Were supposed to be the master of the elements but for 15 years weve been unable to dispell magic.

Dispelling magic requires you to tap into enchantment school, if you'll look at PC magi abilities throughout history there is not that many of enchantment spells here (decurse and early version of water elemental comes to mind), it's quite possible that PC just doesn't know this school well enough, which could be fixed by expanding arcane spec.

Another similar point you could make is "Were supposed to be the master of the elements but for 15 years weve been unable to raise dead"

[gcsmith]

Ugh... I'm already dreading this "unpruning"... non-rotational abilities are fine, but rotations already have the required "critical mass" of abilities, and any duplicates will be pure bloat.

If a Frost mage already has Ice Lance as an instant cast that works with their kit... what use will Fire Blast really have? Is it there just to say "now I cast the orange spell... and now the blue spell... and now the orange spell"? Are they useless for the other specs, but they're there just so people can goof off?

If this was made in a more customizable way, it would be cool, but just throwing random specs' spells just to pretend "mastery of elemental magic" is atrocious design.

It doesn't help with action bar muscle memory, also.

Now I wish mages had stances with their own action bars. At least I'd be able to change to "frosty" "fiery" and "arcaney" when on Frost, Fire or Arcane and use the keybinds I already have for area spells, basic spam, instants and such for the other ones they're putting there. That way at least, when I'm Fire and I need to stop spamming Fireball and spam Frosbolt (because the slow I guess), I can just press the same BASIC SPAM button I use for Fireball and not try to reach an absurd keybind for a spam which would be unfit to be on a rotational keybind spot, while moving.

This is going to drive me nuts...

It depends tbh, given fireblast has a CD it might have higher damage than icelance (without procs) so we might have use of it while moving. For example.

[Devilyaki]

Maybe we this means sv hunters won’t be melee ??!! :/

[Revamp Man]

Wow only two pages and already people are saying they prefer pruning over choice and utility

It's simple if you get say fire locked as fire mage you will still be able to cast Frost spells and arcane spells

A ton of super tiny ads that can die in a global because they have almost no health boom arcane explosion

Need to chitin add so you need to slow it boom Frost bolt

we don't know everything that the classes are getting back so people complaining about how it will mess with rotations or anything like that need to calm down because undoubtedly the play style each class is going to change

Personally mage feels bland even though I mostly play Frost it's so boring

Maybe there will be a fight in the next expansion that has the old mechanic of if you cast the spell your lock out of that arcane or fire or Frost school for 15 seconds so you can essentially eliminate that mechanic by using fire blast as Frost mage

[scubi666stacy]

When are you going to cast frostbolt as a fire mage? While leveling and nowhere else. All the "class identity > spec identity" from Blizzcon 2019 is really only going to affect leveling. And for certain specs/classes, pvp.

Note that I'm not saying depruning is a bad thing; it's just not nearly going to be so groundbreaking as people are hyping themselves up to think. Though I admit I am curious if this means that Survival's run as a melee spec is over. Shame if it is; I rather liked it even if I don't main hunter (they can't tank or heal so I can't justify maining one).

If you need someone to kite a mob in a dungeon, you have been using frost bolts even in a different spec. If you need a dot on a mob or boss for whatever reason, you would use fireball. This is about utility. It's not that difficult.

[Charge me Doctor]

If you need someone to kite a mob in a dungeon, you have been using frost bolts even in a different spec. If you need a dot on a mob or boss for whatever reason, you would use fireball. This is about utility. It's not that difficult.

You have flamestrike for that, using frostbolt for that seems redundant. Does it mean that flamestrike will lose its snare component, making it objectively worse ability, because of fluff reasons of having frostbolt as a fire mage?

[scubi666stacy]

Ugh, worst statement they made.

Shamans are masters of the elements, mages are masters of arcane that can specialize in different schools. fire and frost are only 2 elements anyway.

I liked the direction that mages were specialists while shamans were generalist elementalists, now they are just shamans in robes, and when i play my fire mage, i dont want to have frosty abilities on my actionbar, and dont tell me not to use it when its a part of my skillset that my class is balanced around, thats retarded.

They should have just added a couple of frostfire talents to frost/fire talent trees and called it a day.

Mages have been generalists since Classic. Shamans have healing spells, earth spells, nature spells and totems to differentiate them from a mage. Honestly, your statement is embarassing.

[Ange]

There is no cast-pushback and multi-element spells makes spellschool silences/interrupts worthless.

I am really curious what price all mage players will pay for this silly bloated spells.

I hope nobody is that naive to think that a range caster with kite/root/cc tools agains melees is gona be immun to interrupts as well without any counter mechanic.

Imagine geting multi DR for everything or something even worse is the price you have to pay for some gimmicky abilitys only leveling casual will ever use. Holinka's pvp influence could be summed up as melee buffs and caster nerfs to keep the game balanced. If you think this changes will remove the last remaining caster annoyance in pvp without a price to pay you are clearly mistaken.

[jstnw89]

If they're fluff and useless, you all don't have to put them on your bars.. It's really that simple

[maccajoe]

People need to chill out obviously shamans are the masters of the elements and mages dont conjure fire and ice that way. He simply mispoke and a simple "arcane elements" in his sentence of said would rectify everything.

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You mean separate specs. The specs as they are now are separate. What it was before and will be again is you know things from all 3 but specialize on one. Hence the term specialization.

[Pawstruck]

Did you really just quote yourself? How obnoxious...

It's gonna be a handful of spells that still don't do much. I wouldn't be so ecstatic... Definitely not as self-righteous as you are.

It's a game, not the vindication of your soul...